Firefox 5 Now Available for Download

Just three months after the release of Firefox 4, Mozilla has pushed out Firefox 5 for the desktop and Android devices.

That’s a big change from the two years it took to move from Firefox 3.5 to Firefox 4. Firefox 5 is part of Mozilla’s new rapid release development cycle. This cycle, which is more akin to what Google does with its Chrome browser, promises faster, more iterative updates. With any luck, Mozilla expects Firefox to hit version 7 by the end of the year.

Visually, Firefox 5 looks identical to Firefox 4. Everything we said in our Firefox 4 review applies to this release.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, Mozilla has added better support for web standards, fixed some bugs, made performance enhancements and added a few additional code touches.

The big new features, courtesy of the release notes include:

• Support for CSS animations
• Better visibility for the Do-Not-Track header preference
• Improved canvas and JavaScript support
• Better standards support for canvas, HTML5, XHR, MathML and SMIL
• Better tuned HTTP idle connection logic

In another move that mimics what Google does with Chrome, Mozilla now has more options for users who want to partake in the beta and testing process. In addition to nightly and beta channel releases, users can also opt to use the new Aurora channel, which will give users access to features before they hit beta, but with limited QA testing that you don’t get with nightly releases. This is akin to Chrome’s developer channel.

In my tests, Firefox 5 is fast — even faster than Firefox 4. I also love the more frequent update cycle, because it means that the browser will be more able to support the latest and greatest browser features.

To update to the latest Firefox, click on the “check for updates” button in the “About Firefox” menu. In the comments, let me know your thoughts of the new Firefox and its more frequent release cycle.

Author: dfgdfg,

Categories: Firefox, Firefox 5, Mozilla, software, Tech News

Firefox 5 Around the Corner: To Be Release Soon

The official release date of Firefox 5 has been set to June 21, which is three days from today. If you do not want to wait until then to play around with the latest stable release of the popular web browser, you can go ahead and download the browser for your language and operating system from the official Mozilla ftp site. As with all releases that appear there, there is a slim chance of last minute bugs that could force Mozilla to pull the release and replace it with another one. If you want to be on the safe side, or want to upgrade or install Firefox 5 in a productive environment, it is better to wait until the official release announcement.

So what’s new in Firefox 5? The release notes list the following new features and changes:

• Added support for CSS animations
• The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
• Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
• Improved standards support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas
• Improved spell checking for some locales
• Improved desktop environment integration for Linux users
• WebGL content can no longer load cross-domain textures
• Background tabs have setTimeout and setInterval clamped to 1000ms to improve performance
• The Firefox development channel switcher introduced in previous Firefox Beta updates has been removed

Those are almost exclusively under the hood changes, some may be noticeable on day to day like the improved performance.

It should be noted that Firefox 5 introduces HTTP Transaction sorting by CWND which can improve page loading times considerably. See Firefox 5 Gets Faster Connections, Up Next: Memory Improvements for an in depths review and explanation of that feature.

The do not head tracker preference has been moved to the Privacy tab to get more exposure. Users can activate it to send a “do not track” request to each website they open in Firefox.

Interested users can access the complete list of bugs fixed in Firefox 5 here. Each entry links to Bugzilla where additional information can be found.

The latest version of Firefox 5 can be downloaded from the official Mozilla ftp server. It is likely that most Firefox release mirrors will offer the new version on their servers as well.

Next in line is Firefox 6, which will be released in about three months time.

Author: dfgdfg,

Categories: Firefox, Firefox 5, Firefox Release, Mozilla Firefox, software

Firefox 5 Gets Faster Connections, Up Next: Memory Improvements

Firefox 5 is a week away from being released as a final version. The browser is expected to be released as final on June 21. When you look at the changelog you will notice quite a few under the hood improvements that have not been talked about yet. HTTP Transactions sorted by CWND is one of those features. Most users probably wouldn’t associate a faster browser with that feature in particular, but the explanation on the Bugzilla site might change that.

What really distinguishes different connections to the same server is the size of the sending congestion window (CWND) on the server. If the window is large enough to support the next response document then it can all be transferred (by definition) in 1 RTT.

It basically means that Firefox may load resources faster if connection handling and priorities are changed.

I’ve done an experiment to show the best case – a link to a 25KB resource off of a page that contains a mixture of small and large content. In both cases the 25KB resource is loaded with an idle persistent connection. In the historic case it reuses a connection that had loaded a small image previously and it takes 3RTT (793ms) to transfer it.. in the case of sorting by cwnd the window is large enough to accommodate the entire resource and it is all complete in 1 RTT (363ms). Cool!

Even better, the worst case scenario is the status quo of Firefox 4. Users who are interested in a longer, more technical explanation, can visit the Bitsup blog for a taste of that.

Firefox 4 transfer

Firefox 5 transfer

The guys over at HTTPWatch have tested the new feature and found the “the performance benefit [to be] substantial”.

In other news: Firefox has a bad reputation for excessive memory usage, and related to this slow downs especially on startup or when closing the browser window. While that is certainly not the perception of all Firefox users, many perceive Firefox as a browser that uses to much memory.

The MemShrink project aims to optimize Firefox’s memory consumption. The developers list speed, stability and perception as the three core benefits of optimizing the memory usage of the Mozilla Firefox web browser.

The project members will analyze memory leak reports and prioritize them based on numbers of affected users and their default priority.

The developers have created a new website called Are We Slim Yet which tracks the process of cutting down on Firefox’s memory usage.

If things go forward as planned, we might see considerable memory footprint reductions in coming versions of the browser.

Author: dfgdfg,

Categories: Browser, Firefox, Firefox 5, Mozilla, Mozilla Firefox, software